(Taken and Summarised from www.medscape.com)

December 8, 2008 — Abdominal fat has been associated with heart disease and diabetes, and now researchers have discovered that it is also linked to depression.

Investigators at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam found that older individuals with depression had a 2-fold increased risk of gaining visceral fat (abdominal fat between the internal organs) during 5 years when compared with their counterparts without depression.

This research sheds more light on the complicated connections between fat, depression, heart disease, and diabetes, said study author Nicole Vogelzangs, MSc. "Storing your fat around the visceral organs puts you at risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and now we know depression is linked to those risks, too," she told Medscape Psychiatry.

However, the investigators found no association between depression and an increase in overall obesity, suggesting that even depressed subjects who maintain or lose weight can accumulate abdominal fat.